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Neil deGrasse Tyson Death By Black Hole
This guy is hilariously informative. I highly recommend everybody read this book even if you're not into having your mind blown by science. It immediately places Dr. Tyson in the "Carl Sagan pantheon of great scientists who make the amazing accessible for the lay man". Seriously, who needs religion and spirituality when you can be enrapt with wonder by the very workings of our bodies, our planet, our universe!!!
For the first post since the interregnum, I'm going to reprint here the piece I posted on goodreads.com that inspired me to restart blogging. It's here in it's original form, unedited, with the comment I posted there after I actually finished reading the book. Enjoy...
Daniel Pinchbeck 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
this guy is a fucking idiot. i'm forcing myself to finish this because i need to see where he ends up. after a promising start, the book cruised straight downhill into a pile of endless shit. um, buddy, guy, dude, you've based your stupid book on widely (and I mean WIDELY) discredited pseudoscience and touchy feely new age drivel. i'd be laughing while reading this if it wasn't so infuriatingly tragic that people believe this garbage. uh, you do understand that science is based on that which is experimentally verifiable and not just some wild thoughts and premises that people of questionable psychological stability dreamed up ages ago. rudolf steiner? carl jung? seriously? c'mon! you've even botched the parts where you criticize Jared Diamond's conclusions (which are based on actual evidence and testable theories) in his books. did you even read his books, because it doesn't sound like you did.... you use whitley strieber's "Communion" as examples of abductions when even he has claimed his book shouldn't be used as an example of an alien abduction, since there's no way to prove it wasn't something that was dreamed.
oh, and i'll end here, but i've done hallucinogens. a fair amount of them. they fun recreationally. they are, however, not a spiritual doorway to new "consciousness". all they do is reinforce some belief that you already hold about them. jesus, the '60s sucked for a reason, don't try to bring them back you vapid, baby-boomer fuckhead.
okay, deep breaths, deep breaths...i'm done.
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i posted that review before i had actually finished the book. now that i'm done forcing myself to finish it, i have another final comment about the "sexual politics" that pinchbeck throws in at the end: "oh gosh, you have issues with monogamy? join the crowd! but don't start going off on how it's the fault of women for leading men around by their collective vaginas just because you can't make a decision as to whether or not you want to stay with your wife (who has obviously called you out on your bullshit and you can't really write that in a book about your personal bullshit). "you remind me of that handful of neo-hippie guys at vassar who talked a big game about who knows what that made some pathetic girls wet and then slept with as many of them as possible. give it up, you're no better than any frat boy ever. in fact, you're worse, because you try to veil your misogyny in postmodernisms and can't admit to yourself that all you care about is keeping your dick wet and you don't care about 'liberating women' or humanity or any other nice sentiments." i'm proud of myself, that was a pretty good part II of my rant. pat on the back to me!
It's been four months since I last posted anything on here. In fact, as of that last post I wasn't sure whether I wanted to post anything ever again. Well, in the off time I scored a job at a great bookstore (shameless plug for Shakespeare & Co. here) which allows me to read pretty much all day long, in between tasks of course. But basically, yeah, I get to read a lot more and after reading a few things recently, I decided it would be a good idea to start incorporating book reviews here.
As far as the music reviews go, I'll probably still do some from time to time, but for the most part I've been listening to old stuff and playing a lot of catch-up on bands that I never heard that I probably should have started listening to years ago. That was mostly the reason why I stopped posting. That and I just plain got bored of it.
So to make a long re-intro slightly less long and stupid, I'm gonna start posting on whatever I feel like now instead of just music and tidbits of other things...
So it's quite obvious that I haven't posted for nearly a month now. Both a lack of ideas and a lack of interest have contributed to this current situation. Unfortunately for anybody that really cares, there is little that can motivate me to rectify this. So I'm not saying that this is the end of Spaceship Bastille, but I have no immediate plans to restart/resume/reawesomize this site. If I do come back, there will certainly be notice posted here.
Now get off your computer and read a book, or write a song, or paint a thing...
Today's featured article is Slayer. I love it when shit like that happens. Otherwise I have no real news. Tomorrow night (Thursday, 6/28), all you NYC kiddos should head over to Rockstar Bar in Williamsburg (S.5th/Kent) and see a bunch of rad bands play.
Alright, I definitely got lazy during the past eleven days and haven't posted a damn thing. Been focused on other stuff other than finding music and writing about it. I think I posted about shows I wanted to go to (but probably didn't) and I will mention now that the mighty Team Dresch is playing in Brooklyn tonight. Since I've never seen them live, I really should go, but it's a friday night and they're coming out with a new album, so I get the impression that they'll probably tour again. Who knows.
In other news, this is going down next thursday. NYC folks should check it out:
Okay, okay, I f'd up stupidly this weekend by neglecting to mention that last night (yeah, sunday night) there was gonna be a kickass show for anyone in the general NYC vicinity. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my band was playing and conflicts of interests could have arisen. But fuck it, my band is good, and I will state that right here.
Now, when you're in a band, you get used to the fact that only about 15% of the time are all the bands on the lineup awesome and agree that everyone else was awesome as well. Last night at Fat Baby was one of those nights. So here, check out these bands:
Archaeopteryx - This off-kilter bass/drums "metal" combo is heading out on a two month tour right now. Most likely that means they'll be in whatever town you live in/live near. Go see them.
From Cocaine to Rogaine - Just met this metal/core instrumental trio last night. Young band putting together some impressive tunes. I haven't listened to the demo they gave me yet, but I will today, so I'll update soon.
Stay Fucked - I've posted about these fellas before, and they've never failed to impress. Unfortunately they'll be taking a brief hiatus as bassist, Tony, is one half of Archaoesohdjfshotx and will be gone on tour.
Warmth - My band. I won't write about us. It's already lame enough that I've mentioned it.
Suffice to say that there is a really amazing undercurrent of strange, difficult-to-classify heavy music going on in Williamsburg right now. Jazz- and math-influenced not-quite-metal with a serious diy/punk attitude. Bands that seem doomed to repeat the lack of notoriety that too many of our influences have endured. While the neighborhood becomes more well known for its influx of condos and i-bankers and shitty derivative pop-music bullshit, there is really some incredible music happening. In a city where there is a constant entertainment overload, it's easy to avoid going to shows where a bunch of "no-name" bands are playing. I'm as guilty as the rest of 'em, particularly since there's so much of the same "trendy" stuff happening. It really sucks to go to a show to see some friends play and just be bombarded by three other shitty bands who just seem to have latched on to some shallow conception of what music is about. Hell yeah that's a pompous statement. Part of the reason that I keep this blog going is that it's a lot of work to keep up on innovative music when there's so much horrible background noise hiding the good stuff. I'm not content to just let some hacks get famous because somebody-knows-somebody and they dress "right." This just might be the last thing in my life that I'm still a hopeless romantic about. New York can jade a person right quick, but I'm also finding that this city can still be fuel for some romantic musicians.
Ah, that felt good, corny and necessary.
Alright, I feel really ignorant sometimes when there's a fantastic band out there that I really should know about, but just don't. This is how I feel about Enslaved right now. They've been around for 16 years now and have released 9 full albums. I didn't really know anything about them, but their latest album, Ruun made so many people's "Best of 2006" lists that I had to pick it up. Of course, I'm broke 80% of the time, so I got it a good year after its release date (May 2, 2006). But whatever, Ruun is so ridiculously fantastic (except for track 2, which I haven't warmed up to at all yet) that I can't stop listening to it. When I first heard the term "progressive black metal" I wasn't quite sure how to imagine it, but wow, it's right up my alley. And by alley I mean a glorious enema of buzzing guitars, squealy/screechy vocals, melodically dark keys passages and wonderfully varied drumming. I love great black metal drumming in all its blastiness, but here there's plenty of change in terms of style and structure that it opens up beautiful new black metal paths. Man, I have a wicked boner for these guys right now, it's bordering on embarrassing. Fuck it. I know exactly why this made so many lists for last year. I also have to dive into their back catalog and boner up on my Enslaved history. This is gonna be fun.
In other news, my little affair with Enslaved got in the way of my big crush on the new Dinosaur Jr album, so a full review of that will have to wait. However, since Dino is playing here in NYC next week, I can do some big awesome thing to celebrate. I also finally just got my hands on the final Bucket Full of Teeth installment, IV. I'll be writing about that soon, too, because it also rules. What a good fucking haul this week.
Still completely kicks ass. Finally got my hands on Beyond and, well, I've only made it to track three, but so far it feels like where they probably would have gone had the original lineup not taken an 18 year hiatus. So far the only thing that feels different is the production sounds like 2007 instead of 1987. But it still sounds and feels like Dinosaur Jr. This album could have been utter poo-filled donut. Nope. I'm gonna return to paying attention to this quintessential J Mascis guitar solo. Be back later with a full report.
Sorry for the utter lack of updates lately, but I do have a handful of records that should (and I emphasize "should") be arriving today. That means good things are coming, but I always say shit like that.
Anyway, the real reason for this post is that Google has developed an amazing new way to distract you from work. Or in my case, given that I work in the amazing world of NYC real estate, a plausibly work-related way to procrastinate.
Google StreetView. (c'mon, do I really have to link to that? ok, fine.) For serious nerds like me, you can now tour street-level through Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. For now this is way to awesome, though I'm sure at some point it'll get tired. Fortunately, the good folks at Google are probably already working on that.
I've also more personal news to spew, as my band, Warmth, has a bunch of shows in the city during the next month. If you're into mathy noise rock, or noisy math rock, come check us out. At the very least, come to the show with Stay Fucked and Archaeopteryx, because they're awesome.
